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Practice Area 03 · AI Adoption and Workflow Redesign
Responsible AI Adoption, Built Around Your People
Move from scattered AI experiments to an organization where people, workflows, data, and governance are ready for AI.
THE THREAD helps leaders decide where AI belongs and where it does not, redesign the work around it, govern it responsibly, and develop the people who will use it, so decisions become sharper, work moves faster, and technology strengthens what the mission requires.
What changes when AI adoption is treated as organizational redesign, and why it matters to your board, your people, and the communities you serve.
Where most organizations areWhere we take you
Scattered pilots and individual experiments
A prioritized use-case portfolio tied to mission outcomes
So whatAI investment goes where it moves the mission.
Unclear policy and unmanaged use
Governance with an accountable owner, human review, and clear limits
So whatRisk is managed, and trust is earned.
Reports and workflows rebuilt by hand
Priority workflows redesigned, with AI where it genuinely helps
So whatHours return to the people who serve your mission.
Staff uncertain about what AI means for them
People trained, involved, and confident in their role
So whatAdoption that sticks, not tools that sit unused.
Systems and data that do not connect
Trusted data and integrations for priority use cases
So whatDecisions and AI built on evidence you can defend.
No baseline for time, cost, or quality
Measured outcomes and a value case
So whatA defensible case for your board to scale.
Responsible AI is organizational redesign
AI Should Not Simply Be Added to Existing Work
Responsible AI adoption begins by understanding the mission, the work, the people performing it, the systems supporting it, the information flowing through it, and the risks surrounding it. Only then should an organization determine where AI belongs.
THE THREAD combines three disciplines.
01
Organizational Development
Design the organization around the mission.
Structures
Roles
Leadership
Talent
Capability
Culture
Change
Governance
+02
Lean Thinking
Improve the work before automating it.
Value
Flow
Root cause
Waste reduction
Experimentation
Measurement
Continuous improvement
+03
Responsible AI
Integrate technology with accountability.
Use cases
Human oversight
Governance
Data stewardship
Risk management
Measurement
Trustworthiness
We do not begin by asking, “Where can we use AI?”
We begin by asking, “What does the mission require, how does the work happen today, and what should people and technology each contribute?”
The Responsible AI Adoption Framework
Six Connected Phases, One Continuous System
Select a phase to see what we examine, what we build, and what you receive.
Learn Again
Phase 01
Understand the Work
Before introducing AI, understand what is happening now.
Process Mapping
Stakeholder Listening
Data Review
Root Cause
Current-State Assessment
Map
workflows
decisions
handoffs
friction
duplication
delays
systems
data
stakeholder experience
areas requiring human judgment
OutputCurrent-State Work & System Map
Phase 02
Identify the Right Opportunities
Determine where AI can responsibly improve the work.
Also determine where AI should not be used.
Use-Case Discovery
Value Assessment
Risk Screening
Feasibility
Prioritization
Where AI can improve
quality
access
speed
service
decision support
knowledge access
workforce capacity
OutputResponsible AI Use-Case Portfolio
Phase 03
Redesign the Work
Do not automate a process that first needs to be redesigned.
Future-State Design
Workflow Redesign
Decision Rights
Human + AI Roles
Systems Integration
Clarify
what people own
what AI can support
what can be automated
what must remain human
how decisions move
where review is required
how systems need to connect
OutputFuture-State Human + AI Workflow
Phase 04
Govern the System
Build responsibility into the operating model.
Governance
Human Oversight
Escalation
Data Protection
Risk Controls
Define
ownership
permissions
privacy
security
acceptable use
prohibited uses
human oversight
escalation
monitoring
accountability
auditability
OutputResponsible AI Governance Model
Phase 05
Develop the People
Technology adoption is also a capability challenge.
Leadership Literacy
Role-Based Learning
Change Readiness
Team Capability
Adoption
Prepare leaders and employees to
use AI responsibly
understand limitations
exercise judgment
work in redesigned processes
know when to intervene
continuously improve the work
OutputAI Workforce Capability Plan
Phase 06
Measure, Learn & Scale
Pilot before scaling.
Pilot
Baseline
ROI
Performance
Continuous Improvement
Measure
adoption
time
quality
cost
risk
employee experience
customer or stakeholder outcomes
mission outcomes
OutputResults + Scale Recommendation
See what connected AI looks like in practice
See the System, Not Just the Technology
A complex journey rarely belongs to one organization. People move through schools, institutions, services, employers, communities, and systems that often cannot see what the others see. Responsible AI can help create continuity without removing human judgment.
Interactive example
Student Success & Economic Mobility Ecosystem
View the journey as:
Belonging
Progress
Completion
Skills
Employment
Mobility
Community Impact
01
Middle School
Interests and identity
Academic foundations
Career awareness
Family engagement
Digital access
02
High School
Pathway planning
Tutoring
Dual enrollment
Financial readiness
Career coaching
Internships
Graduation readiness
03
College / University
Enrollment
Belonging
Academic progress
Advising
Financial persistence
Credentials
Mental health support
04
Internship + Community Learning
Work-based learning
Mentoring
Employer projects
Community experience
Applied skills
05
Graduate / Professional Learning
Specialization
Advanced credentials
Leadership
Professional development
Reskilling
06
Career
Job matching
Onboarding
Advancement
Continuous learning
Leadership development
07
Economic Mobility + Community Impact
Earnings progression
Entrepreneurship
Leadership
Family mobility
Civic participation
Regional workforce impact
AI-Enabled Decision & Navigation Layer
SeeBring relevant information together.
GuideHelp people understand what comes next.
ConnectMatch people with resources, opportunities, and support.
SignalSurface emerging needs or barriers.
DecideGive people better evidence for decisions.
LearnUse results to improve the system.
Governance Layer
Consent
Privacy
Security
Role-Based Access
Human Review
Equity
Escalation
Auditability
AI informs. People remain accountable.
See the system work
One Signal, Followed All the Way Through
The same logic applies well beyond education. Choose a scenario and watch information move through the workflow.
Scenario
Steps marked Human are decided by people. AI informs. People remain accountable.
1
AI-assisted
2
Automated
3
Human
4
AI-assisted
5
Human
6
Human + system
7
Automated
8
AI-assisted, human-reviewed
The technical architecture behind connected AI
Connect What Already Exists Before Adding More Technology
Responsible AI often depends less on adding another platform than on helping existing systems, workflows, data, and people work together more intelligently.
Select a layer to expand it.
People at the top, governance at the foundation, and one thread connecting every layer.
Student / Employee Portal
Advisor / Manager Workspace
Executive Dashboard
Employer Portal
Board Dashboard
Community / Partner View
Where people see and act: the portals, workspaces, and dashboards each role already uses.
Natural-language assistant
Recommendations
Knowledge retrieval
Opportunity matching
Decision support
Early signals
Forecasting
Analytics
Where AI adds value: finding knowledge, surfacing signals, and supporting decisions, always reviewable by people.
Referrals
Case management
Approvals
Notifications
Escalations
Tasks
Scheduling
Human review
Automation
Where work moves: referrals, approvals, tasks, and escalations, with human review built in.
SIS
LMS
ERP
CRM
HRIS
Financial systems
Data warehouse
Document repositories
Workforce systems
Employer platforms
Community systems
Where existing systems connect, so information is collected once and used many times. Connect what already exists before adding more technology.
Identity
Role-based access
Privacy
Security
Consent
Data stewardship
Human oversight
Risk classification
Model monitoring
Audit trails
Policy
Escalation
Where responsibility lives: who can see what, how risk is classified, how models are monitored, and how every decision can be traced.
Responsible AI governance aligned with the NIST AI Risk Management Framework
AI Readiness Assessment
Is Your Organization Ready for Responsible AI?
14 questions. About five minutes. See where your organization is prepared, where it may be exposed, and what to address first.
Strategy
Work
People
Systems + Data
Governance + Risk
Value + Measurement
Your answers are scored in your browser and your results appear right away. Nothing is saved unless you request the downloadable snapshot. Please do not enter confidential or personal information.
Question 1 of 14
AI ROI + Organizational Value Calculator
What Could Responsible AI Be Worth to Your Organization?
Build a realistic business case around the work you actually want to improve. Values update as you change any assumption.
When Federal Reporting Becomes an Organizational Design Problem
In August 2026, the U.S. Department of Education reported that more than 1,900 institutions had not reported or had under-reported required Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment (FVT/GE) data for the 2024 and 2025 cycles, and set a final deadline of January 15, 2027 for the overdue data. By late September 2026, about 1,550 institutions were still short.
THE THREAD is studying why. Through current advisory work with a private university of fewer than 1,000 students, we are examining what it takes for a small institution with a lean team to move from deadline-driven reporting to a continuous institutional intelligence system: data collected once, governed, integrated, and reused for compliance and decisions. Our working hypothesis is that the gap is rarely technical alone. It is organizational: ownership, workflow, data governance, and capability.
1,900+Institutions not reported or under-reported (ED, Aug. 2026)
~1,550Still short as of Sept. 25, 2026
Jan. 15, 2027Final deadline for overdue data
The system we are designing
Collect
Validate
Integrate
Analyze
Report
Decide
Learn
Client name withheld for confidentiality. Findings will be shared as the work matures.
The solution
A Clear Path From AI Interest to Responsible Adoption
Three steps, each with a clear question, clear deliverables, and a decision point. Start with readiness and design; deployment and scale are scoped from what the readiness work shows.
Step 1
Responsible AI Readiness & Design
From $60,000
Where should AI go, where should it not, and what must be true first?
Organizational AI readiness diagnostic
Executive and stakeholder interviews
Workflow and system mapping
Responsible use-case portfolio
Governance and risk design
Workforce capability plan
Pilot recommendation and ROI framework
You leave withA defensible plan your board can approve.
Delivered as an OpenAI Select Partner. Governance aligned with the NIST AI Risk Management Framework. Every engagement is led personally by Dr. Leonie H. Mattison.
Investment
Pricing and ways to engage
Every engagement is shaped to your organization’s size, scope, and goals. We confirm scope and investment together before any work begins.
How investment is set
1
A confidential conversationWe listen to what you are navigating.
2
Scope shaped to youYour organization’s size, scope, and goals shape the engagement.
3
Investment confirmed togetherBefore any work begins.
Commissioned engagementsDefined scope, timeline, and deliverables
THE THREAD is an organizational and talent development firm that partners with boards and executive leaders to align people, systems, and strategy so their organizations can fulfill their mission.
Dr. Leonie H. MattisonFounder & Principal, THE THREAD
“I believe leadership is a sacred act of stewardship, one that welcomes the wisdom of history, the discernment of the head, the humanity of the heart, the work of our hands, and the hope of what is still possible.”
I’m Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, founder of THE THREAD, an organizational and talent development firm that helps boards, chief executives, and founders navigate growth, leadership transition, organizational performance, and responsible AI adoption by aligning people, systems, strategy, governance, and execution.
For more than 20 years, I have led at the president, CEO, and COO levels across higher education, government, public health, and human services. The challenges my clients bring to THE THREAD, from developing talent and redesigning systems to growing revenue, strengthening performance, and leading through transition, are ones I have carried myself.
Across sectors, I have done this work at scale. During the Great Recession, I directed regional workforce innovation and economic development, moving 942 residents through training and 212 into jobs. I also grew a public health grant portfolio from $20 million to $65 million; built organizational and talent development systems serving 4,600 employees across 23 county departments; modernized a multi-site health and human services organization through the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping services running across more than 20 locations; and guided a post-founder institutional transition that produced 40% growth in new enrollment and 54% growth in net assets within two years. Over my career, I have secured and stewarded more than $300 million on behalf of institutions, people, and communities.
A university educator and author of 13 books, I was named a 2023 Top Women in Business editor’s pick for higher education by the Pacific Coast Business Times and contribute to the Forbes Business Council. That experience shaped the T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ and the Institutional Coherence Index, the proprietary approaches my firm uses to surface the patterns beneath results and help leaders decide what to strengthen, change, or redesign. As an OpenAI Select Partner, THE THREAD also helps organizations integrate AI responsibly and measurably.
Clients value my executive judgment, clarity, and ability to see across the enterprise. Whether an organization is scaling, changing leadership, or preparing for its next chapter, I help boards and executives frame the choices, unite the organization, and move consequential priorities forward with confidence.
We find out what is really happening before recommending anything. Through data, institutional history, and listening across roles, we trace the pressure your leaders feel back to the patterns producing it.
Institutional assessment
Stakeholder interviews
Data review
Pattern analysis
Readiness assessment
Phase 02
Develop
We develop your people before we design anything. Leaders and teams build the knowledge, skills, and shared language to own the change, from new systems and data to the guidance that shapes their work.
Leadership development
Team coaching
Capability building
Systems and AI training
Change readiness
Phase 03
Design
We co-create the solution with the people who will carry it. Structures, roles, decision rights, workflows, and governance are designed around what the mission requires now.
Organization design
Decision rights
Workflow redesign
Governance
Talent architecture
Phase 04
Deploy
We put the new model into daily operations in phases, with clear ownership and support. Pilots, communication, and training help new ways of working take hold.
Implementation planning
Pilots
Change management
Policy and process updates
AI adoption
Phase 05
Demonstrate
We prove the change is working. Baselines set at the start become measures your board, leaders, and funders can read at a glance.
Performance measures
Dashboards
Board reporting
Impact evaluation
Return on investment
Phase 06
Deepen
We make the change last and help it scale. What you learn feeds the next cycle, so the organization keeps improving long after the engagement ends.
Sustainability planning
Continuous improvement
Knowledge capture
Succession planning
Scaling what works
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™
Read the moment. Know where you begin. Expand your range.
Most change efforts treat the symptom. We read the pattern.
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ helps leaders read the moment, recognize where they tend to begin, and draw from six practices to shape people, systems, and organizations with greater intention.
Read the moment. Name what the situation is really asking of you before you respond.
Know where you begin. Every person, team, and organization develops a way of meeting the moments that matter most. Notice the practice you reach for first.
Expand your range. Draw from all six practices, so your response fits the moment rather than the habit.
The same six practices work for one person, a team, an organization, and a community.
Rooted in a quilter’s wisdom: every pattern carries a history, and every thread holds tension.
Consequential change rarely runs on a project timeline. Retained partnership gives leaders senior counsel before challenges become crises, and the capacity to act when they do.
Executive & Board Advisory
Counsel for executives, boards, and leadership teams facing consequential decisions, leadership transitions, and organizational complexity.
Performance & Effectiveness
Ongoing capacity for companies, public agencies, health and human services organizations, nonprofits, and colleges strengthening planning, performance measurement, compliance, research, and continuous improvement.
Organizational Transformation
Partnership for organizations navigating growth, restructuring, redesign, AI adoption, or significant change, from diagnosis through implementation.
What Leaders Say
Trusted across sectors
“Dr. Lee is a proven transformational leader who engages staff with a particular emphasis on communication, process improvement, organizational culture and breaking down departmental silos. Her thoughtful, intentional approach and ability to engage leaders at all levels and her focus on staff development and creating a learning culture has elevated our organization’s credibility on a statewide level.”
Patricia KeelanCEO, CommUnify
“Leonie ensures that the workforce is kept in the know at all times...she is creative, a strong communicator and collaborator... I shared with my department how fun and welcoming she made it for the new employees. Good job!”
Mona MiyasatoCounty Executive Officer, County of Santa Barbara
“The Board unanimously and wholeheartedly endorses President Mattison and the exemplary work she has done for PGI, including such initiatives as: executing our first Shared Governance Structure; administering significant campus-wide advancements with our 2030 Strategic Plan, ‘Onward Together;’ completing the first ever, Faculty and Staff Compensation and Workload Study; [and] implementing our first Faculty Rank Structure.”
Board of TrusteesPacifica Graduate Institute
Engagement Models
You lead the organization. We strengthen what stands behind it.
Retained Partnerships
Six-month minimum. Billed quarterly. Investment scaled to organizational size and scope.
A rigorous assessment of your leadership team or organization, with confidential individual responses, aggregate findings, and a strategic debrief with Dr. Leonie H. Mattison.
What you receive
The full Index across your leadership team or organization
Interviews and a review of organizational data
An executive report with combined results by role and unit
The patterns beneath the results, and a 90-day coherence plan
Perspective from Dr. Leonie H. Mattison for boards, chief executives, and founders on leadership, talent, and responsible AI, delivered to your inbox.
We use your name and email only to send The Thread Brief. Unsubscribe anytime.
Confidential inquiry
Tell Us What You Are Navigating
Tell us what you are navigating, and we’ll help you determine the right path forward.
Home / Solutions / Organizational Transformation and Design
Practice Area 01 · Organizational Transformation and Design
Build the organization your strategy requires
When priorities compete, decisions stall, and the structure still reflects how things used to be, the problem is rarely effort. It is design. We align strategy, structure, decision rights, and institutional effectiveness so your organization can deliver what it has promised.
Led by executive leadership with presidential and CEO experience · Powered by the T.H.R.E.A.D. System™
Uneven executionA plan your organization can carry
Stalled decisionsClear decision rights
Review-season scramblesContinuous readiness
From → To
Where you are. Where we take you. Why it matters.
Every engagement is measured by what changes for your organization, your board, and the people you serve.
Where you areWhere we take youSo what
Where you areThe strategic plan is approved, but execution is uneven
Where we take youPriorities with owners, measures, and resources
So whatYour board sees progress, not just activity.
Where you areDecisions stall, overlap, or land in the wrong place
Where we take youClear decision rights for the decisions that matter most
So whatFaster decisions and less rework.
Where you areDepartments work in silos and hand-offs break down
Where we take youWork that flows across departments, with clear ownership
So whatCapacity returns to the mission.
Where you areRoles have grown by accretion, not design
Where we take youRoles and reporting lines designed for the work ahead
So whatTalent is spent on what matters most.
Where you areEvidence is gathered in a rush before every review
Where we take youContinuous readiness and decision-grade institutional data
So whatConfidence before regulators, accreditors, and funders.
Where you areReorganizations happen, but the friction returns
Where we take youA structure that adapts as the strategy evolves
So whatChange that holds after we leave.
What we do
Four ways we strengthen the whole organization
Choose where the pressure is greatest. The work connects the rest.
01Strategy
Strategic Planning
For you if the plan is approved but execution is uneven, priorities compete for the same people and budget, or the board needs a clearer line of sight to results.
The result: a plan your organization can carry, and a board that can see progress.
What you receive
Environmental scan and stakeholder engagement
Strategic priorities, measures, and resource alignment
Every engagement follows The THREAD Process, adapted to your institution. See the full process →
The THREAD ProcessAdapted to your institution
1
See the PatternDiagnose
Map structure, workflows, and decision patterns, and listen to the people doing the work.
2
Shift the StoryDesign
Co-design options with your leadership team and resolve overlaps in decision rights first.
3
Weave the FutureImplement
Phase in the new design with clear ownership, communication, and support.
4
Sustain the WholeMonitor
Track adoption and adjust, so the design holds after the engagement ends.
From inside the work
Governance redesign and renewal at Pacifica Graduate Institute
As President and CEO, Dr. Mattison led Pacifica through a governance redesign that established its first shared governance structure and first faculty rank structure, launched the Onward Together 2030 Strategic Plan, and guided the institution to a six-year WSCUC reaffirmation in 2025.
Enterprise and multi-site engagements by proposal. Fractional and interim executive leadership is also available.
Free assessment
See where your organization holds together, and where it is carrying strain
The Institutional Coherence Index is a short executive assessment across six dimensions of institutional coherence. It helps leadership teams see the pattern beneath the pressure before deciding where to act.
Need the full picture? The Institutional Coherence Diagnostic extends the Index across your leadership team or organization, by application.
ROI calculator
What is misalignment costing you?
Estimate the capacity your organization loses to unclear decisions, rework, and workarounds, and what recovering part of it could be worth.
The starting values are illustrative, not industry benchmarks or a forecast. Replace them with your own figures. Results are estimates to support a conversation, not a guarantee of savings or return.
One system
Three practice areas. One connected organization.
People, systems, and strategy are designed together, because that is how they work. Most engagements draw on more than one.
Not necessarily. Many organizations gain more from clarifying decision rights and processes than from changing reporting lines. We recommend structural change only where the diagnosis shows it is needed.
How long does an engagement take?
It depends on scope. A focused diagnostic can be completed in weeks; a full redesign and implementation usually runs across several months or a full academic or fiscal year.
Who leads the work?
Every engagement is led personally by Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, with associate practitioners brought in as the scope of work requires.
Do you work with startups and growing companies?
Yes. We work with established institutions and with founders and growing companies building the structure, leadership, and systems their next stage requires.
How quickly can we begin?
We scope the first phase with you in the initial conversation and can move quickly when timing matters. A focused diagnostic can be completed in weeks.
Home / Solutions / Talent and Leadership Development
Practice Area 02 · Talent and Leadership Development
Develop the leaders your next chapter depends on
When critical knowledge lives with a few people, succession is left to chance, and managers are promoted without preparation, every departure becomes a risk. We build the leadership bench, capability, and learning culture your strategy requires.
What changes for your leaders, your teams, and the continuity of your organization.
Today
Critical knowledge lives with a few long-serving people
1
With THE THREAD
Knowledge shared across systems, teams, and successors
So what: A departure becomes a transition, not a crisis.
Today
There is no plan if a key leader leaves tomorrow
2
With THE THREAD
Ready successors for your most critical roles
So what: Continuity your board can count on.
Today
Managers are promoted without preparation
3
With THE THREAD
Managers equipped to lead people through change
So what: Stronger performance and fewer escalations.
Today
A leader steps into a defining role alone
4
With THE THREAD
A confidential thinking partner who has held the seat
So what: Better judgment when the stakes are highest.
Today
Training happens, but behavior does not change
5
With THE THREAD
Learning built into the work itself
So what: Capability that shows up in results.
Today
Turnover is rising in the roles that matter most
6
With THE THREAD
People who can see a future inside the organization
So what: Lower replacement costs and stronger retention.
What we do
Four ways we build leadership capacity
Support for the leaders carrying the change, and the teams that will sustain it.
Coach
Coach
Executive Coaching
For you if you are leading through a transition, a new role, or a moment that will define the organization, and you want a confidential thinking partner who has held the seat.
Executive Coaching for presidents, CEOs, founders, and senior leaders
Transition Mentoring for leaders stepping into new roles
Team Coaching for leadership teams that need to move as one
Clearer judgment under pressure, and a leadership team that moves together.
Every engagement follows The THREAD Process, adapted to your institution. See the full process →
The THREAD ProcessAdapted to your institution
1
See the PatternDiagnose
Assess capabilities, succession risk, and where knowledge is concentrated.
2
Shift the StoryDesign
Define the leadership and capabilities the strategy needs, and design the pathways to build them.
3
Weave the FutureImplement
Launch cohorts, coaching, and development plans with clear ownership.
4
Sustain the WholeMonitor
Track retention, mobility, and readiness, and refine the programs.
From inside the work
Workforce development at the County of Santa Barbara
As Chief of Organizational and Talent Development, Dr. Mattison reimagined the County Employees’ University with a WSCUC-accredited university partner, giving employees a pathway to undergraduate and graduate degrees, and built technology-enabled workforce systems supporting 4,600 employees across 23 departments.
“Leonie ensures that the workforce is kept in the know at all times...she is creative, a strong communicator and collaborator... I shared with my department how fun and welcoming she made it for the new employees. Good job!”
Mona Miyasato, County Executive Officer, County of Santa Barbara
Investment
Clear starting points. Customized to your scope.
Every engagement is shaped to your organization’s size, scope, and goals. We confirm scope and investment together before any work begins.
How investment is set
1
A confidential conversationWe listen to what you are navigating.
2
Scope shaped to youYour organization’s size, scope, and goals shape the engagement.
3
Investment confirmed togetherBefore any work begins.
Commissioned engagementsDefined scope, timeline, and deliverables
A clear view of what you shared, in plain language
Your Thread Profile and starting practice
A personal report to download, with a copy emailed to you
Leading a team? Pair your reflection with the Institutional Coherence Index to see the organization behind the pressure.
ROI calculator
What is leadership turnover costing you?
Estimate the annual cost of turnover in leadership and critical roles, and what stronger development and succession could save.
The starting values are illustrative, not industry benchmarks or a forecast. Replace them with your own figures. Results are estimates to support a conversation, not a guarantee of savings or return.
One system
Three practice areas. One connected organization.
People, systems, and strategy are designed together, because that is how they work. Most engagements draw on more than one.
Yes. Workshops, cohorts, and courses are available through The Thread Institute, online, in person, or hybrid, and can be customized to your organization.
Is coaching available for founders and new executives?
Yes. Executive Coaching and Transition Mentoring are designed for presidents, CEOs, founders, and senior leaders stepping into consequential roles.
Who leads the work?
Every engagement is led personally by Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, with associate practitioners brought in as the scope of work requires.
Do you work with startups and growing companies?
Yes. We work with established institutions and with founders and growing companies building the structure, leadership, and systems their next stage requires.
How quickly can we begin?
We scope the first phase with you in the initial conversation and can move quickly when timing matters. A focused diagnostic can be completed in weeks.
Organizations do not transform. People do, and then they redesign the organization around what they have learned. We work with the leaders and teams at the center of that change, from the boardroom to the front line.
300 to 6,000+Employees in the organizations our founder has led
7Leadership audiences we serve
8Industries and sectors
Boards and trustees
What you are carrying
You are accountable for direction, leadership, and risk, often with limited visibility into how the organization is really working.
How we help
Governance alignment, leadership transitions, decision-grade evidence, and oversight of responsible AI.
Every industry faces its own pressures. The pattern beneath them is familiar: strategy, people, and systems that need to move together. We learn your industry’s language and bring the discipline to change it.
Organizational and Talent Development for Higher Education
Enrollment, accreditation, finances, and technology are shifting at once. Your institution needs a structure, a workforce, and a culture built for what comes next.
Led by executive leadership with presidential and CEO experience
Higher education change rarely moves in a straight line. We meet you at the stage you are in and connect it to the next.
1Assess
See the whole institution
Enrollment and revenue pressure traced to root causes
Accreditation and institutional effectiveness readiness
Academic and administrative structure review
Listening across faculty, staff, students, and board
2Design
Build the institution the strategy needs
Organizational design and decision rights
Shared governance roles clarified
Program portfolio aligned to mission and market
Workforce and succession planning
3Transition
Lead through the change
Leadership and post-founder transitions
Change management and campus communication
Systems and AI adoption across the institution
Restoring trust after a season of instability
4Sustain
Make the change hold
Institutional effectiveness and data culture
Leadership development for cabinet and managers
Continuous improvement rhythms
Board and cabinet alignment
Why THE THREAD
From the president’s office, not the sidelines.
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison served as President and CEO of Pacifica Graduate Institute through a post-founder identity transition and a post-pandemic enrollment decline, leading the institution to a six-year WSCUC reaffirmation of accreditation in 2025.
She has served as faculty at Antioch University, where she taught Strategic Management, and has lectured at Santa Barbara City College, Westmont College, Saybrook University, and Middlesex County College.
Organizational and Talent Development for Public Health and Healthcare
Mandates, funding, and community need change faster than structures and workforce can follow. We help health organizations build the capacity to keep pace.
Experience across public health, research, and human services
Health organizations change under pressure, often in public. We help you move with clarity at every stage.
1Assess
See the capacity behind the mission
Workforce capacity and burnout
Program and funding alignment
Data and reporting systems
Coordination across agencies and partners
2Design
Structure for the work ahead
Organizational structure across programs and funding streams
Workforce pipelines and career pathways
Roles for integrated care and community partnerships
Operating models, including transitions to nonprofit partners
3Respond
Lead through the moment
Leadership through crises and emergencies
Change management during reorganization
Technology and AI adoption
Clear communication with staff, partners, and community
4Sustain
Keep the gains
Leadership development
Continuous improvement with Lean methods
Outcomes and accountability
Partnerships built to last
Why THE THREAD
Led inside the system, in its hardest moments.
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison has worked inside public health, research, and human services when it mattered most: at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene after 9/11, at Sansum Diabetes Research Institute, at the County of Santa Barbara through the Thomas Fire and mudslide, and at CommUnify during COVID.
She serves as a Santa Barbara County Behavioral Wellness Commissioner, and is a Lean-certified executive and organizational development practitioner.
Every stage of a space venture asks something different of its people and structure. We help you build the organization each stage requires.
1Build
Standing up the organization
From founding team to first hires
Roles, decision rights, and structure
A pipeline for first-time managers
Culture and values set before growth
2Launch
Scaling through milestones
Organizational design that keeps pace with contracts and funding
Hiring and onboarding at speed
Processes and systems that scale
Coordination across engineering, operations, and business
3Operate
Sustaining mission operations
Retaining critical talent
Knowledge transfer and documentation
Workforce development and career pathways
Performance and continuous improvement
4Govern
Leading with accountability
Board and leadership team alignment
Accountable, documented processes
A culture that holds under mission pressure
Workforce partnerships with colleges and training programs
Why THE THREAD
New industry. Familiar pressures.
The space economy is young, but its organizational challenges are not: rapid growth, high-stakes missions, regulation, and the need to build a workforce that does not fully exist yet. Dr. Leonie H. Mattison has led through these pressures in public health, clinical research, government, and higher education, and has taught engineers at the community college level.
She is a Lean-certified executive and organizational development practitioner, and holds the ChatGPT Deployment Practitioner credential from OpenAI, bringing process discipline and technology fluency to every engagement.
THE THREAD is based on California’s Central Coast, home to Vandenberg Space Force Base, and brings experience building workforce systems alongside colleges, workforce programs, and community partners.
Find answers to common questions about working with THE THREAD.
Who is THE THREAD?
THE THREAD is an organizational design, development, and transformation practice.
We help you build the structure, talent, leadership, systems, and capabilities required to deliver your mission.
Our experience was built across higher education, government, public health, nonprofit, and workforce systems. Today, we bring that expertise to mission-driven work across land, air, sea, and space.
We work globally through a network of experienced practitioners and subject-matter experts assembled around the needs of your mission.
We design the organization around your mission.
How do I work with THE THREAD?
Easy.
Start with an assessment. It gives us a better picture of where you are before we recommend where to begin.
Think of us as organizational architects and builders of human capability.
Your engineers may design the aircraft, vessel, spacecraft, technology, facility, or product. We help you design and develop the organization around it.
That means your structure, people, leadership, decisions, systems, culture, and capabilities: the organizational infrastructure required to move ambitious work from idea to execution.
Depending on what your mission requires, we may diagnose, design, teach, coach, build capability, integrate systems, or help lead the transformation alongside you.
The work follows your mission.
What should I expect from an organizational design and development partner?
You should expect a partner who understands your mission before prescribing a solution.
A strong partner should:
Understand your mission.
See your whole system.
Connect your strategy to structure, talent, systems, and execution.
Build capability inside your organization.
Prepare you for what comes next.
Our quilting lens shapes how we do this.
A quilt gains its integrity from how individual pieces are selected, positioned, joined, and reinforced.
Your organization works the same way.
Your strategy, structure, talent, systems, leadership, and culture form a pattern. If one piece pulls against another, eventually the tension shows.
We help you see that pattern and redesign what is no longer holding.
Why is organizational transformation so difficult?
You may know exactly where you want to go. The harder question is whether the organization you have today can carry you there.
Your organization may have been designed for the mission, technology, workforce, or scale that came before. When your mission changes faster than your organization, you feel it everywhere: decisions slow down, talent gets stretched, accountability blurs, good people become frustrated, and strategy struggles to become execution.
A successful space mission doesn’t necessarily mean you are ready to scale. Your next constraint may not be the spacecraft. It may be a founder-dependent operating model, undeveloped leaders, unclear decisions, or an organization built for one mission rather than the next ten.
More demand doesn’t necessarily mean you need more people. If your roles overlap, handoffs are broken, or decisions sit in the wrong places, adding headcount can add coordination without adding capacity.
Digital transformation doesn’t necessarily mean you need another technology platform. Layering new technology over old workflows, unclear ownership, and inaccessible institutional knowledge can simply digitize your existing friction.
A new strategy doesn’t necessarily mean your organization is ready to deliver it. Your strategy can change overnight. Your structures, roles, incentives, capabilities, and operating systems rarely do.
If you are asking, “Is my organization designed for what my mission requires next?”
That is the pattern we help you see.
Can THE THREAD help if I already have a strategy, plan, or transformation underway?
Yes.
You do not have to start over.
We help you determine whether the organization around your plan is designed and equipped to deliver it.
Your new strategy may require different roles and decision rights. New technology may require different workflows and capabilities. Growth may require a different operating model. A leadership transition may expose structures built for a different era.
We help you identify what needs to change around your plan so your plan can work.
Follow what we’re building, learning, launching, and contributing at THE THREAD.
Press release
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison Introduces THE THREAD to Help Boards and Executives Lead Transformation and Responsible AI Adoption
The Santa Barbara organizational and talent development firm helps leaders align people, systems, strategy, and responsible AI to achieve intentional transformation.
We’re excited to share that The Thread, LLC has been named an OpenAI Select Partner. As part of the OpenAI Partner Network, we look forward to continuing our work with OpenAI to help organizations build, deploy, and scale AI solutions responsibly and effectively.
We launched a new digital home for our work in organizational design, talent development, systems transformation, and intentional transformation, including the evolving T.H.R.E.A.D. System™. Explore our practice, research, learning, and movement around one central question: What does your mission require next?
THE THREAD Movement secured fiscal sponsorship through the Santa Barbara Foundation, expanding our capacity to bring intentional transformation to young people, women, and communities.
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™: Release the Pattern, Redesign the Conditions
Explore why your organization can invest deeply in change and still reproduce familiar outcomes, and why lasting transformation may require redesigning the conditions keeping old patterns in place.
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison Selected as a Katherine Harvey Fellow
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison was selected for the Katherine Harvey Fellows program, joining a cross-sector community advancing civic leadership and community impact across California’s Central Coast.
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™: Why Thinking Deeply Must Be Every Leader’s First Move
Before you redesign structures, introduce technology, or launch another initiative, you need to understand what is actually happening. Explore Think Deeply, the first practice of the T.H.R.E.A.D. System™, and why clarity must precede action.
Explore what can happen when institutional demands collide with your deeply held values, and the role allies, relationships, and collective responsibility can play in navigating difficult choices.
Few institutions budget for change capability. Every institution pays for its absence. Workshops, leadership cohorts, and courses that help leaders and teams lead change, redesign work, and adopt AI together.
Most teams know what needs to change. Few have the capacity to lead it under pressure.
Training that happens once and disappears rarely changes behavior. Our programs are built into the work: practical frameworks, real institutional challenges, and follow-through, so new ways of leading and working take hold.
Ways to learn
Choose how you learn
For individualsSelf-paced online
Courses you can start today on The Thread Institute.
For teamsLive virtual workshop
Interactive sessions for distributed teams, from a focused two-hour workshop to a multi-session series.
For teamsOn-site workshop
Immersive half-day to two-day workshops at your institution, designed around your priorities.
For leadersLeadership cohort
A development journey of six weeks to six months for a group of leaders, online, in person, or hybrid.
For organizationsCustom program
A program designed around your organization, your challenges, and your goals.
Course catalog
The Thread Institute catalog
Courses across six collections. Select a collection to browse, then enroll on The Thread Institute.
Build the leaders and people your strategy needs · 8 courses
Each topic can be delivered as a workshop, a cohort, or a custom program.
01Leading Through Change
The human and organizational dynamics of change, and practical approaches for leading it.
02Redesigning Work Around AI
Adopting AI as an organizational challenge: workflows, governance, and staff capability.
03Systems Thinking for Leaders
Seeing the patterns beneath recurring problems, and designing for the whole.
04Organizational Design
How strategy, structure, roles, and decision rights interact.
05Talent Development and Succession
Building the leadership bench and capabilities your strategy requires.
06Accreditation and Continuous Improvement
Evidence, assessment, and routines that keep institutions review-ready.
Faculty
Learn with Dr. Leonie H. Mattison
Executive leadership with presidential and CEO experience, creator of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™, and a teacher across universities, colleges, and community classrooms.
Faculty, Antioch University
Lecturer at Santa Barbara City College, Westmont College, Saybrook University, and Middlesex County College
Has taught engineers at the community college level
Lean-certified executive
Organizational development practitioner
ChatGPT Deployment Practitioner, OpenAI
Enroll
Start learning, or plan a program for your team
Enroll in a course today, or tell us about your team and we will design a workshop or cohort around it.
When the institution is under pressure, your composure is part of the strategy.
Leaders set the emotional weather for everyone around them. Coaching gives you a confidential space to see your own patterns under pressure, think clearly about hard decisions, and lead with the steadiness your institution needs.
Coaching options
Three ways to work together
For presidents, CEOs, and cabinet leaders
Executive Coaching
One-to-one coaching for leaders carrying institutional pressure who want clarity, composure, and a plan.
A T.H.R.E.A.D. reflection on your current pressures and patterns
Regular one-to-one sessions at a cadence set with you
Support between sessions for decisions that cannot wait
Every leader has a pattern under pressure. Few know how to use it.
Coaching draws on the six practices of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™, so you move from reacting to leading with intention: thinking deeply, harvesting wisdom, releasing patterns that no longer serve you, enlisting allies, adopting change, and designing wholeness.
Speaking · Community engagement · Conscious conversations
Every room has an underside. Let’s talk about it.
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison brings the conversations leaders usually have in the parking lot into the room: candid, warm, a little uncomfortable in the best way, and practical enough to use on Monday.
Which meeting do you dread, and what is it quietly protecting?
Three ways into the conversation
On a stage, around a table, or in the community
Keynotes
For the big room
Conferences, convenings, and leadership summits that need energy, honesty, and a shared language for what everyone is carrying.
Conscious conversations
For the real talk
Fireside chats, panels, book conversations, and podcasts where the best part is the question nobody planned to ask.
Community engagement
For the people it touches
Community gatherings and public conversations on wellbeing, leadership, and belonging, grounded in years of civic service on the Central Coast.
Talks
Start with a question. Leave with a pattern you can finally see.
01
What does pressure know about you that you don’t?
The Pattern Beneath the Pressure
Under strain, every leader has a move they swear they do not make. (They make it.) We name it, trace what it once protected, and practice the six movements of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ that change it.
The room leaves with a name for their own pattern, and one move to try the next time the pressure lands.
02
What is holding your institution together that nobody talks about?
The Underside of the Quilt
My grandmother was a quilter. The front of a quilt is what everyone admires; the underside is where you learn whether it will hold. A talk about the knots, workarounds, and quiet heroes that decide whether a strategy survives contact with Monday.
The room leaves with a shared language for what is holding, what is straining, and what to mend first.
03
What are you hoping AI will fix that is really about us?
Buying AI Is Not the Transformation
We hand new technology our hopes and our fears, then act surprised when it hands them back. A candid, practical look at adopting AI without leaving people on the underside.
The room leaves with three questions to ask before the next tool is purchased.
04
Which story about your organization stopped being true a while ago?
What History Teaches Leaders
Every institution keeps telling a founding story long after the plot has changed. We harvest what the past actually knows and let go of what it only remembers.
The room leaves with a way to honor the history without being governed by it.
05
What happens to a leader asked to act against what they value?
Leading Through Moral Injury
The quiet wound of doing what the institution needs while carrying what it costs. A tender, clear-eyed conversation about repair, for leaders and the people who support them.
The room leaves with permission to name the cost, and practices for leading through it.
06
Who would you be if you stopped performing the version of you that got you here?
Women Achieving Intentional Transformation
On identity, ambition, and the choices that shape what comes next, told with humor, faith, and a few stories that land close to home.
The room leaves with one intentional choice to make before the next season chooses for them.
What it feels like
Less lecture. More recognition.
People laugh, then go quiet, then start talking to each other. That is the point. Every session is tailored to your audience, grounded in two decades of executive practice, and designed so the conversation keeps going after the event ends.
Conference keynotes and leadership summits
Board and cabinet retreats
Fireside conversations, panels, and book talks
Community forums and public conversations
Workshops, breakouts, and podcasts
20+Years leading transformation
13Books authored
ForbesBusiness Council contributor
Presidentialand CEO experience
Published in Forbes Business Council, Inside Higher Ed, University Business, and the Pacific Coast Business Times. Listen to the podcast →
Every person, team, and organization develops a way of meeting the moments that matter most.
Grounded in more than two decades of executive practice and published in The Thread Movement Journal, the T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ brings together six interconnected practices for leading, developing people, and designing organizations with greater intention.
Pressure reveals patterns. Practice creates possibility.
How to use thisChoose one response. Your choice carries through the rest of the page.
Step 2 of 7 The six practices
Six Practices. One Expanding Range.
Each practice brings a different kind of attention to the work. Choose one, then explore how it changes across self, team, organization, and community.
How to use thisSelect a practice, then switch between Self, Team, Organization, and Community.
Each practice moves in a direction. The Thread Movement Journal, Issue One, organizes the six practices across four movements: Inward, Backward, Outward, and Forward. Two have since been named within them: Downward, within Backward, for Release Patterns, and Upward, within Forward, for Adopt Change.
Step 3 of 7 Signature tool · Read the moment
What is the moment asking of you?
Organizations change through the choices people make inside real moments. Choose the situation that feels closest to yours, and T.H.R.E.A.D. will surface the practices and questions worth bringing to the work.
How to use thisChoose a situation. The practices it calls for light up, with questions to bring to the work.
TSeeHLearnRInterruptEConnectAPracticeDAlign
The work is learning to choose the practice that serves the moment.
Step 4 of 7 From instinct to range
Where You Begin Shapes What You See
Where you begin influences what you notice, whose voice you seek, and what you are inclined to do next.
How to use thisHover over or tap any practice to see what it adds. You can change where you begin at any time.
A guided reflection from THE THREAD designed to help you name what you are navigating, see what may be shaping it, and discover an intentional place to begin.
This reflection is designed to help you make sense of what is happening beneath the surface of a moment, not just react to what is happening around you.
There are no right answers and no score to achieve. The goal is to help you slow down long enough to name what brought you here, notice what matters, recognize what the situation may be costing or affecting, and consider what you want to move toward.
Your responses work together to create a clearer picture of the moment you are in and the choices available to you. You may notice a familiar pattern, a value you want to return to, something you are ready to release, or a possibility you had not yet considered.
You do not need to have everything figured out. Begin with what feels true now.
Arrive
Notice
Reflect
Imagine
Choose
Your THREAD
Home / The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ / The Thread Journal
The Thread Movement Journal · Issue One · 2026
The evidence behind The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™
The heart of our work: a practice-based framework for intentional transformation, examined with scholarly rigor and grounded in more than two decades of executive leadership. It works for individuals, teams, organizations, and communities.
The Thread is the underlying pattern woven through everything you have lived: the experiences, relationships, memories, and inherited wisdom that shape how you meet pressure and change. Pressure brings it to the surface. Once you can see it, you can choose what to weave next.
In an organization, team, or community, The Thread is the underlying pattern that holds together what appears fragmented: the history, decisions, relationships, routines, and inherited ways of working that shape how it responds to pressure. Once leaders can see it, they can reshape what the system keeps producing.
Pressure reveals patterns. Once a pattern can be seen, a different pathway can be chosen.
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ is six practices that help a person, team, organization, or community see that pattern, work with it, and redesign what comes next.
See the Pattern. Shift the Story. Weave the Future.
Where it began
It began on a grandmother’s verandah in Jamaica
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison’s grandmother was a quilter. On her verandah in Jamaica, she taught the lessons that became the foundation of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™.
IEvery pattern reveals its maker’s history.
IIEvery thread carries tension.
IIINo piece of fabric is too broken to become part of something whole.
“My grandmother was a quilter. The front of a quilt is what everyone admires; the underside is where you learn whether it will hold.”
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison
The six practices mirror the work of quilting
Select a patch.
A quilt is not built from perfect pieces. It is formed from what exists: fragments, history, inheritance, necessity, creativity, and intention. The thread is what binds these parts into a coherent pattern.
How we know
Epistemology, autoethnography, and the discipline of practice
01EpistemologyQuilting as a way of knowing
“The language of thread, quilt, pattern, and weaving in this framework is not decorative. It is epistemological.” The framework draws on quilting traditions of women of the African diaspora and the Caribbean as carriers of memory, identity, artistry, survival, kinship, and cultural meaning across generations.
02AutoethnographyPractice examined with rigor
The framework was developed through autoethnographic practitioner inquiry: more than two decades of executive leadership across higher education, public systems, nonprofits, and workforce and community work, examined systematically and tested against established research.
03Patchwork ethnographyA guard against self-confirmation
A structured reflexive method that renders visible the seams of the inquiry, so the author’s interpretation is examined rather than assumed.
Our claim, stated plainly. Executive practice does not replace randomized study. The journal presents disciplined practice as a legitimate and distinctive form of evidence, and sets out a research agenda to test the framework further.
The core logic
From pressure signal to redesigned conditions
Select each step to see what happens and what to ask.
Step 1 of 6
Pressure
Pressure enters a person, team, organization, or community: a leadership transition, a funding shift, an enrollment decline, a new technology, a public moment.
AskWhat pressure is present, and where is it entering?
The model
Six practices across four movements
Interdependent and non-linear: enter at any practice, return as new patterns surface, or work several at once. Locate inward. Assess backward. Decide outward. Act forward.
Since Issue One was published, two movements have been named within these four: Downward, within the Backward movement, for Release Patterns, and Upward, within the Forward movement, for Adopt Change. Harvest Wisdom remains Backward, and Design Wholeness remains Forward.
TInward
Inward movement · Locate inward
Think Deeply
Name what is beneath the visible issue.
“What is really happening beneath the first explanation?”
Not chained to one level
One system for individuals, teams, organizations, and communities
For the person carrying the pressure
Individuals
Leaders use the practices to see the pattern in their own response to pressure, recover what experience has already taught them, and choose a different response on purpose.
For the system that keeps producing the same results
Organizations
Organizations use the practices to diagnose what their systems keep producing, then redesign the structures, decisions, incentives, and routines that hold the old pattern in place.
Communities use the practices to bring what has become fragmented back into relationship, through The Thread Movement, W.A.I.T.™, and FutureWoven™ for young people.
The system tells one story while operating from another.
It may proclaim trust while keeping decisions opaque, claim to be innovative while punishing risk, claim inclusion while concentrating authority, or claim transformation while preserving the incentives that maintain the old pattern.
Under pressure
Two ways a system responds
Conscious response
Names the issue, examines evidence, tests assumptions, and supports deliberate choice. It expands capacity for judgment, learning, collaboration, redesign, and implementation.
Unconscious protective response
Protects authority, belonging, competence, control, identity, legitimacy, or survival before the threat is fully conscious. In this sense, unconscious protection can appear as competence.
The practices, among people
Where the work happens
In conversationIn communityIn the roomIn connection
Theoretical foundations
Built on established research, sequenced for practice
The framework’s contribution lies in the disciplined sequencing of established organizational and developmental insights into a practical, usable architecture.
Organization developmentBurke; Cummings and Worley; Bushe and Marshak
Systems thinkingMeadows; Senge
Organizational learningArgyris and Schön; Kolb
Sensemaking and threat responseWeick; Staw and colleagues
Adaptive leadership and immunity to changeHeifetz; Kegan and Lahey
Implementation scienceDamschroder; Proctor
Psychological safetyEdmondson
Socio-technical systemsTrist and Bamforth
Depth psychology and systems psychodynamicsJung; Hillman; Menzies Lyth; Bion; Winnicott
Race, gender, and organizationsCollins; Bell and Nkomo
Which of the six practices produces the strongest shift in conscious interpretation and intentional action?
What is the relationship between repeated response patterns and trust, psychological safety, implementation quality, engagement, retention, and innovation?
How do the four movements operate across individual, team, organizational, and community contexts?
How can the system become validated assessment tools, facilitation protocols, curricula, and organizational diagnostic methods?
Thank you for taking a few minutes to look at the pressure you are carrying, and what it may be trying to show you.
Before you begin
Answer as things are now, not as you think they should be.
There are no right or wrong answers. Your first honest response is usually the most useful one.
For adults 18 and older. All of our assessments are open to adults 18 and older.
This is private. Your answers are never shared with your employer or anyone else.
About seven minutes, one question at a time. You can go back and change an answer.
The Institutional Coherence Index is the better fit.
This reflection is designed for leaders looking at their own leadership. For a view of how your organization is holding together, the Institutional Coherence Index is the better fit.
The Thread is the underlying pattern woven through everything you have lived: the experiences, relationships, memories, and inherited wisdom that shape how you meet pressure and change. Pressure brings it to the surface. Once you can see it, you can choose what to weave next.
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ is six practices that help you see that pattern, work with it, and weave it into the future you want.
Leadership Self-Reflection · For individuals and leaders
What is your thread right now?
A short reflection to name the pressure you are carrying, the concern beneath it, where it is landing in your life, and what matters most to you. You will receive your Leadership Self-Reflection report with your Thread Profile, a starting practice, and a worksheet.
The pressure you are carrying, by name
The concern beneath it, and what it will cost if nothing changes
Where it is landing across your life and your leadership
Its impact on you and on others
The values and desire that matter most, and how ready you are
Before you begin, we will ask where to send your report. Your information is used only to send your reflection and to follow up if you ask us to. See our privacy notice.
Your Leadership Self-Reflection
1Pressure
2Concern
3Where it lands
4Impact
5What matters
Almost there
Where should we send your reflection?
Your first look will appear on screen, and we will email you a copy of your Leadership Self-Reflection with your results and next steps.
Important: The Leadership Self-Reflection is a leadership and professional development tool. It is not a clinical, psychological, medical, wellness, legal, or human resources assessment, and it does not provide advice in those areas.
A seven-minute reflection for individuals and leaders. Name the pressure you are carrying, and receive a personal report that shows the pattern beneath it, and the practice that can help you move through it with intention.
Slow down long enough to see what is actually true before you act.
H · Backward movementHarvest Wisdom
Look back to what earlier seasons of your work have already taught you.
R · Downward movementRelease Patterns
Name the habit or assumption that keeps recreating the pressure, and loosen its hold.
E · Outward movementEnlist Allies
Change that touches many people needs many hands. You do not have to carry it alone.
A · Upward movementAdopt Change
Turn insight into one concrete action, and let the results teach you.
D · Forward movementDesign Wholeness
Build the rhythms and structures that make change last, without relying on willpower alone.
Select a practice to see what it asks of you.
Five questions
A short reflection with a long reach
Every question is designed to help you see what pressure is revealing, not to judge it.
1
Pressure
What pressure are you carrying? Name it.
2
Concern
What worries you most, and what will it cost if nothing changes?
3
Where it lands
Which areas of your life and your leadership is it touching?
4
Impact
How heavily is it landing on you, and on others?
5
What matters
Which values do you want to honor, and what do you want most?
“Pressure reveals patterns, and once a pattern can be seen, a different pathway can be chosen.”Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, Creator of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™
What you receive
A personal report, not a label
A welcome and a clear view of what you shared, reflected back in plain language
Your Thread Profile, ranking the six practices by how strongly your moment calls for each one
Your starting practice, what it looks like in action, and an activity built around what you want
A worksheet and reflection space so you can put the practice to work this week
A 90-day plan and ways to go deeper, emailed to you and ready to download
About this reflection. The Leadership Self-Reflection is a leadership and professional development tool. It is not a clinical, psychological, medical, wellness, legal, or human resources assessment, and it does not provide advice in those areas.
The THREAD Process turns The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ into a practical engagement: diagnose, design, implement, and sustain. Every stage is adapted to your institution.
Surface what is really driving performance through data, institutional history, and stakeholder listening, so decisions rest on root causes rather than symptoms.
Think Deeply · Harvest Wisdom
2
Shift the StoryDesign
Identify the structures, processes, and assumptions that no longer serve the strategy, and build the leadership coalition and design options to move forward.
Release Patterns · Enlist Allies
3
Weave the FutureImplement
Test, implement, and embed new structures, systems, and capabilities, with clear ownership and the support people need to adopt new ways of working.
Adopt Change
4
Sustain the WholeMonitor
Track the measures that matter and align people, systems, and governance, so the gains hold after the engagement ends.
Design Wholeness
Stage 1 · Diagnose
See the Pattern
We find out what is really happening before recommending anything.
What happens
Document and data review
Listening sessions across roles, levels, and stakeholders
Process, structure, and data-flow mapping
Root-cause analysis
What you receive
A diagnostic report with findings, root causes, and priorities
Who is involved
President, cabinet, and a cross-functional working group
Stage 2 · Design
Shift the Story
We design the way forward with your leaders, not for them.
What happens
Design sessions with leadership and staff
Options analysis with trade-offs, costs, and risks
Decision-rights and ownership mapping
Coalition building with the people who will carry the work
What you receive
A design blueprint and an implementation roadmap
Who is involved
Leadership team, working group, and board as needed
Stage 3 · Implement
Weave the Future
We put the design into practice in phases, with support.
What happens
Pilots and phased rollout
Communication and change support
Training, coaching, and leadership cohorts
Policy, process, and system updates
What you receive
New structures, processes, and capabilities in place
Who is involved
Implementation owners across departments
Stage 4 · Monitor
Sustain the Whole
We make sure the gains hold after we leave.
What happens
Measures and dashboards that matter
Regular review rhythms with leadership and the board
Governance and ownership handoff
Refinement based on results
What you receive
A sustainability plan and a team that owns the work
Who is involved
Leadership team and board
Engagement shape
Scoped to what you need
Diagnostic
Stage 1 on its own: a clear picture of what is driving performance and where to act first.
Design and roadmap
Stages 1 and 2: a tested design and an implementation plan your team can carry.
Full transformation
All four stages, including implementation support, capability building, and sustainability.
We help organizations become what their mission requires.
THE THREAD is an organizational and talent development firm that partners with boards and executive leaders to align people, systems, and strategy so their organizations can fulfill their mission.
20+Years of executive leadership behind the work
$300M+Secured and stewarded for mission-driven work
3Connected practice areas
OpenAISelect Partner
Who we are
A firm built from inside the work
Built from inside the work, and still in the room.
THE THREAD was built by an executive who has held the seat. Our founder brings presidential and CEO experience across higher education, government, public health, and human services, and our network of associate practitioners brings the depth each engagement requires.
We work with boards, chief executives, founders, and leadership teams at consequential moments: growth, leadership transition, strategy that needs new capability, compliance that has become a scramble, and AI arriving faster than the organization can absorb it. Every engagement is grounded in The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™, our framework for seeing the pattern beneath the pressure and redesigning the conditions that produce it.
To help boards, executives, and founders achieve intentional transformation by aligning people, systems, strategy, and responsible AI.
Our vision
Transformed organizations. Thriving society.
We believe that when organizations are whole, the people and communities they serve can thrive.
Our values and spirit
What it feels like to work with us
Loyal to the work
We stay with you until the change holds, not just until the report is delivered.
See the whole
We rise above the noise to see the pattern beneath the pressure, and the system it belongs to.
Awareness first
We think deeply before we act, because the visible problem is rarely the real one.
Together, not alone
Change that touches many people needs many hands. We build allies, not dependence.
Warmth in the work
We bring humanity, humor, and hope into hard moments. People change faster when they feel seen.
Results that last
We measure success by the capability that stays after we leave.
A note from our founder
THE THREAD began with a question I could not set down: why do institutions devoted to transformation so often struggle to transform themselves?
For more than twenty years, I have led organizations through pressure. What I learned is that pressure is information. It reveals the pattern beneath the problem, and once a pattern can be seen, a different pathway can be chosen.
We built THE THREAD so leaders do not have to face that pressure alone. We bring executive experience, a proven method, and a network of practitioners who stay until the work holds. I believe leadership is a sacred act of stewardship. It is an honor to steward this work with you.
An organizational and talent development company is founded to help leaders and institutions transform with intention.
2019
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ is revealed
Six practices, drawn from two decades of executive leadership, give leaders a shared language for seeing patterns and redesigning conditions.
2021
Training curriculum protected
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ training curriculum receives U.S. copyright registration.
2025
Achieve Intentional Transformation launches
The podcast brings grounded leadership insight to leaders under pressure, episode by episode.
2026
OpenAI Select Partner
The Thread, LLC joins the OpenAI Partner Network as an OpenAI Select Partner, extending the work into responsible AI adoption.
Our network
Practitioners who carry the work
THE THREAD works through a growing network of associate consultants, coaches, facilitators, researchers, and certified technology partners. Each engagement is matched with the expertise the work requires, all grounded in The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™.
THE THREADConsultantsCoachesFacilitatorsResearchersTechnology partners
Organizational development and designDiagnosis, structure, decision rights, and change
Strategic planning and assessmentPlans, commissioned studies, and evaluation
Leadership development and executive coachingCoaching, transition mentoring, and team development
Training, facilitation, and learning designWorkshops, cohorts, and eLearning
Institutional research, data, and accreditationReporting, evidence, and institutional effectiveness
Responsible AI and workflow redesignReadiness, governance, and adoption, with certified cloud partners
Process improvementLean methods that improve the work before automating it
Research and evaluationMixed-methods inquiry that builds the evidence base
Opportunities
Work with us
Join our network
Consultants, coaches, facilitators, researchers, and learning designers who share our commitment to intentional transformation.
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison Introduces THE THREAD to Help Boards and Executives Lead Transformation and Responsible AI Adoption
The Santa Barbara organizational and talent development firm helps leaders align people, systems, strategy, and responsible AI to achieve intentional transformation.
We’re excited to share that The Thread, LLC has been named an OpenAI Select Partner. As part of the OpenAI Partner Network, we look forward to continuing our work with OpenAI to help organizations build, deploy, and scale AI solutions responsibly and effectively.
We launched a new digital home for our work in organizational design, talent development, systems transformation, and intentional transformation, including the evolving T.H.R.E.A.D. System™. Explore our practice, research, learning, and movement around one central question: What does your mission require next?
Organizational development scholar-practitioner. Creator of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™. Higher Education Executive and Immediate Past President and CEO of Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Founder of The Thread, LLC, an OpenAI Select Partner. ChatGPT Deployment Practitioner, OpenAI Academy.
For more than two decades, Dr. Mattison has stepped into institutions in the middle of disruption and helped them find their footing: steadying operations, rebuilding trust, and designing systems that last.
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison has spent more than two decades leading institutions built to change lives, across higher education, government, public health, and human services, including as a college president and CEO. Yet the more responsibility she held, the more she confronted a difficult question: why were institutions devoted to transformation so often struggling to transform themselves?
She saw the answer from the inside, leading organizations through economic crisis, public health transformation, natural disaster, pandemic, and institutional turnaround. Different sectors, different pressures, same pattern. Many were still operating through systems, practices, and assumptions designed for a world that no longer exists. They were asking people to change, adapt, and grow while the institutions around them remained largely unchanged. Under pressure, leaders and organizations returned to familiar ways of thinking, deciding, and responding, even when those patterns no longer produced what they needed.
That insight led Dr. Mattison to develop The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™, a framework that equips leaders and institutions to recognize the patterns beneath their most persistent challenges and build the capacity to respond differently. Rooted in lessons from her grandmother in Jamaica, a quilter who taught her that every pattern carries a history and every thread holds tension, the system rests on a clear premise: pressure reveals patterns, and once a pattern can be seen, a different pathway can be chosen.
What began as a discipline forged through decades of leading institutions through complexity has grown into THE THREAD, a practice, movement, and learning ecosystem for intentional transformation. Today, Dr. Mattison and her team work with leaders, organizations, and communities to uncover the patterns beneath pressure, explore new pathways, and build the capacity to create the possibilities their futures demand.
“I have learned that transformation often begins at a threshold, where what was no longer holds and what will be has not yet fully revealed itself. Leadership, for me, is the practice of honoring that space: holding the tension between opposites without rushing to resolve it, listening deeply enough to recognize the pattern beneath the pressure, and bringing head, heart, and hands together in service of what is trying to emerge. That is where I believe hope becomes more than an idea; it becomes something we can help make possible in the world.”
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison
The Thread, LLC is an organizational and talent development company. The Thread Movement is fiscally sponsored by the Santa Barbara Foundation. The Thread Institute is the learning platform that serves both.
The journey
How the work was woven
Seven chapters of organizational design, development, and transformation, each connecting new people, systems, and institutions into the network THE THREAD is today.
Chapter I1990s · Jamaica to New York City
Crossing
Globalization accelerates, immigration reshapes American cities, and the digital age begins.
Between two worlds, an early lesson took shape: identity does not have to disappear in transition. It can be rewoven. The move from Jamaica to New York became a first threshold, and an encounter with the tension between what we inherit, what we leave behind, and what we choose to become. Becoming the first in the family to graduate from college turned that lesson into a lived pathway. It now informs FutureWoven™, designed to help young people imagine and build futures beyond what they can presently see.
Jamaica · New York City · First-generation graduate · FutureWoven™
Chapter II2000s
Leading Through Crisis
Public health systems confront new pressures, the nation responds to September 11, and the 2008 financial crisis destabilizes communities and institutions.
Across public health, economic development, and government, leadership meant entering systems under strain. The work included supporting public health transformation in New York City, including the transition of fiscal functions to a nonprofit partner, and navigating economic development through the financial crisis. Different sectors. Different crises. The same dynamic kept appearing: pressure did not create the pattern; it revealed what the system had been carrying all along.
NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene · Newark Alliance · Obesity and smoking prevention · Grants and fiscal systems
Chapter IIIMid-2000s
Inquiry and Transformation
Social media emerges, information accelerates, and the pace of change begins to outrun the institutions built to contain it.
The questions being asked of organizations eventually turned inward. Lived experience became a site of inquiry, asking not only what needed to change, but what recurring patterns pressure was revealing. What emerged was not a management theory. It was six symbols, arising from a profound season of personal transformation. Each pointed toward a movement of the psyche, and eventually of systems: thinking, remembering, releasing, connecting, practicing, and creating. Those insights became the six practices of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™, a framework later taught and applied across sectors.
Scientific innovation accelerates while communities confront persistent gaps in health, employment, and economic mobility.
A second crossing created another threshold. The Thread, LLC was established, giving the emerging work its first organizational container. In California, the work expanded through diabetes clinical research and then into organizational and workforce development for the County of Santa Barbara, including workforce systems for 4,600 employees across 23 departments after the Thomas Fire and mudslides. Another tension became visible: innovation could move quickly, while the human systems responsible for carrying it forward often could not. Transformation required more than new ideas. It required new capacity.
The Thread, LLC · Sansum Diabetes Research Institute · County of Santa Barbara · Employees’ University
Chapter V2018 to 2021
Movement and Access
Women challenge long-standing systems of power through #MeToo, Santa Barbara rebuilds after catastrophic fire and mudslides, and a global pandemic disrupts how communities live, work, and connect.
The practices began moving from one life into many. The Thread Movement emerged in Santa Barbara County, followed by The Thread Collection, a faith-rooted body of work for women. More than 1,000 books carried the practices into correctional and community settings, and 72 women moved through W.A.I.T.™ as a structured journey of reflection and transformation. As executive responsibility expanded into human services through the pandemic, across more than 20 sites and 16 core programs, traditional systems of gathering, service delivery, and learning fractured. The work moved again. The Thread Institute began taking shape as a vehicle for extending transformation through learning, development, and wider access.
The Thread Movement · The Thread Collection · W.A.I.T.™ · CommUnify · The Thread Institute
Chapter VI2022 to 2025
Leadership at Scale
Higher education confronts post-pandemic disruption, demographic pressure, workforce upheaval, declining public confidence, and the arrival of generative AI.
The work then faced its most consequential test: the presidency of a graduate institution navigating significant organizational change. Strategy, governance, accreditation, finance, enrollment, faculty systems, student success, technology, culture, and organizational design converged in one leadership environment. Working alongside the board, administration, faculty, and staff, the institution was turned around within two years, with a six-year WSCUC reaffirmation and five commendations, its first shared governance structure, fully online degrees, and the Pacifica Promise. The experience tested a larger question: could principles first discovered through personal transformation hold at the scale of an institution? They could. The work had become a way of understanding how people, organizations, and systems transform together.
Pacifica Graduate Institute · Board and governance · WSCUC reaffirmation · Online degrees · Pacifica Promise
Chapter VII2026
THE THREAD
Artificial intelligence and accelerating social, economic, and workforce change are redefining how organizations work, learn, lead, and create value.
What began as inquiry has become an ecosystem: one system expressed through three interconnected vehicles.The Thread, LLC brings organizational and talent design, development, and transformation to institutions. The Thread Movement, fiscally sponsored by the Santa Barbara Foundation, expands access through initiatives including W.A.I.T.™ and FutureWoven™. The Thread Institute builds the capability to practice, lead, and teach intentional transformation. With intellectual property being formalized, original curricula developed and copyrighted, more than 20 partnerships in development, and the Achieve Intentional Transformation podcast reaching thousands, the work is entering a new chapter. In 2026, The Thread, LLC was named an OpenAI Select Partner in the OpenAI Partner Network, extending the work into how people, systems, workflows, and AI work together.
The Thread, LLC · The Thread Movement · The Thread Institute · Achieve Intentional Transformation · 20+ partnerships · OpenAI Select Partner
From the quilting table
“My grandmother was a quilter. The front of a quilt is what everyone admires; the underside is where you learn whether it will hold.”
THE THREAD works through a growing network of associate consultants, trainers, coaches, facilitators, and researchers. Each engagement is matched with the practitioners whose expertise fits the work, all grounded in The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™.
Keynotes and conversations for leaders under pressure
Available for keynotes, board and cabinet retreats, conferences, workshops, panels, and podcasts. Every talk is tailored to your audience and grounded in two decades of executive practice.
01
Leading Through Pressure
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ for intentional transformation: how pressure becomes pattern, and how leaders change the pattern.
02
What History Teaches Leaders
Harvesting wisdom from institutional history to navigate complexity with clarity.
03
Leading Through Moral Injury
What happens to leaders when institutions ask them to act against their values, and how to lead through it.
04
The Underside of the Quilt
Building institutional coherence among people, data, and systems.
05
Redesigning Work Around AI
Adopting AI without losing your people, your data integrity, or your mission.
06
Women Achieving Intentional Transformation
Leadership, identity, and the choices that shape what comes next.
Denver Peak Academy Black Belt, Process Improvement
ChatGPT Deployment Practitioner, OpenAI Academy (individual credential)
Founder of The Thread, LLC, an OpenAI Select Partner (company designation)
Taught Strategic Management, Antioch University
Creator of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™
Author of 13 books
Community service
Behavioral Wellness Commissioner, County of Santa Barbara
Board member, Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce
Grant Making Committee, The Fund for Santa Barbara Racial Equity Fund
Katherine Harvey Fellow, Leading From Within
Mentor, I-NAPA
Board of Trustees, Black Girl Clubhouse
Executive Leadership Fundraising Committee, American Cancer Society
Recognition
Forbes Business Council contributor
2023 Top Women in Business editor’s pick for higher education, Pacific Coast Business Times
Published in Inside Higher Ed, University Business, and Forbes
“...her unique combination of talent, ambition and a preference for collaborative decisions will serve her well.”Pacific Coast Business Times, Editorial Board, 2022
“Dr. Lee is a proven transformational leader who engages staff with a particular emphasis on communication, process improvement, organizational culture and breaking down departmental silos. Her thoughtful, intentional approach and ability to engage leaders at all levels and her focus on staff development and creating a learning culture has elevated our organization’s credibility on a statewide level.”
Patricia Keelan, CEO, CommUnify
“Leonie ensures that the workforce is kept in the know at all times...she is creative, a strong communicator and collaborator... I shared with my department how fun and welcoming she made it for the new employees. Good job!”
Mona Miyasato, County Executive Officer, County of Santa Barbara
Bookstore
Take the work home
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System series, workbooks, and journals for leaders and teams in transition.
What changes when people, systems, and strategy align
THE THREAD helps boards, executives, and founders turn pressure into intentional transformation. Our methods were built and proven inside complex organizations across higher education, government, human services, public health, workforce development, and research. Each story below holds several case studies, and shows where technology, shared governance, improved workflow, and partnerships did the work.
Figures are drawn from the stories below, each with its sources.
Current advisory engagements
THE THREAD is currently providing advisory support to four institutions.
Client names are kept confidential.
2Community colleges
1Public university
1Private university
Exhibit 2 The scale of change
Before and after, drawn to scale
Three results from the stories below, each measured from zero so the change is shown at its true size.
Grant portfolio managedNYC Department of Health and Mental HygieneNet assetsPacifica Graduate Institute, within two yearsFrom training to jobsNewark Alliance, during the Great Recession
Practice area
What did the work
01
Higher Education
Pacifica Graduate Institute
President and CEO
6 yearsWSCUC reaffirmation (2025)
40%Growth in new fall enrollment
54%Growth in net assets, from $5.7M to $8.8M
15State authorizations to serve students
Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, President and CEO, Pacifica Graduate Institute
The challenge
An institution in transition: a post-founder identity shift, a post-COVID enrollment decline, fractured governance, and an approaching reaffirmation review.
What this means for your organization
When an institution faces a leadership transition, a governance reset, or a high-stakes review, the work begins by aligning governance, strategy, and the people who carry them.
“The Board unanimously and wholeheartedly endorses President Mattison and the exemplary work she has done for PGI.”
Pacifica Graduate Institute Board of Trustees
5 case studies inside this story
01
Shared governance, built for the first time
Shared governance
Led a governance redesign that established the institution’s first shared governance structure and first faculty rank structure, recognized in the Board of Trustees’ public statement.
Strengthened the institution’s financial position, growing net assets from $5.7M to $8.8M and recovering $3.5M in federal relief funds within six months.
02
Government
County of Santa Barbara and the County Employees’ University
Chief of Organizational and Talent Development
4,600Employees supported by technology-enabled workforce systems
23Departments connected to shared digital learning
300+Internal job placements
200+Employees heard in the listening tour
The challenge
A county workforce recovering from disaster, with a stalled strategic plan, low morale, and outdated civil service systems hindering recruitment and retention. An appreciative inquiry listening tour with more than 200 employees shaped what came next.
What this means for your organization
When a workforce is stretched and the strategy needs new capability, development has to be built into the system, with real pathways for people to grow.
“Leonie ensures that the workforce is kept in the know at all times...she is creative, a strong communicator and collaborator... I shared with my department how fun and welcoming she made it for the new employees. Good job!”
Mona Miyasato, County Executive Officer, County of Santa Barbara
5 case studies inside this story
01
The County Employees’ University, reimagined
PartnershipsTechnology
Reimagined the County Employees’ University as a regional engine for workforce development, partnering with California State University, Northridge, a WSCUC-accredited university, to give County employees a pathway to undergraduate and graduate degrees, and connecting 23 departments to shared digital learning.
02
Passport to Public Service
PartnershipsImproved workflow
Launched Passport to Public Service with Santa Barbara City College through Adult Education Block Grant funding: monthly workshops that prepare residents to apply for, enter, and advance in County careers. The first workshop drew about 100 applicants.
Developed the JOIN Equity Framework, a shared, County-wide framework for workforce equity that departments could apply together.
04
Renew ’22
Improved workflowShared governance
Advanced Renew ’22, the County’s organizational transformation initiative to re-balance resources, re-design work processes, respond to residents with quality services, and retain high-performing employees and develop leaders, including organizational and talent development reporting to County leadership.
Supported InnovateSBC (SB Innovate), the County’s process improvement and innovation training program, equipping employees at every level with tools to redesign their own work. Civil service rules, job classifications, and remote work frameworks were modernized alongside it.
A countywide community action agency facing surging demand during COVID-19, with siloed departments and outdated systems.
What this means for your organization
When demand rises faster than your systems can carry it, shared intake, onboarding, leadership development, and continuity planning protect both the service and the staff.
“Dr. Lee is a proven transformational leader who engages staff with a particular emphasis on communication, process improvement, organizational culture and breaking down departmental silos. Her thoughtful, intentional approach and ability to engage leaders at all levels and her focus on staff development and creating a learning culture has elevated our organization’s credibility on a statewide level.”
Patricia Keelan, CEO, CommUnify
5 case studies inside this story
01
Community Action Virtual Onboarding (CAVO)
TechnologyPartnershipsImproved workflow
Designed CAVO with the California Community Action Partnership Association (CalCAPA): a three-touchpoint virtual onboarding experience for employees, volunteers, board members, clients, and partners, built on four pillars: People First, Ignite Culture, Inspire Learning, and Show Impact.
Advanced a universal screening and intake system across sites.
04
Family Self-Sufficiency
Partnerships
Served as principal investigator for a $398,000 federal Family Self-Sufficiency grant.
05
Continuity under crisis
Shared governance
Led the Emergency Response Taskforce and continuity-of-operations planning through the pandemic.
04
Public Health
NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Senior Grants Administrator
$20M→$65MGrant portfolio she managed
1,000Jobs retained
8.4MNew Yorkers served by CPPW
The challenge
One of the largest public health agencies in the world, working to address chronic disease and health disparities through a complex city, federal, and philanthropic funding portfolio.
What this means for your organization
When the funding is complex and the mission is large, fiscal systems, partnerships, and governance have to be designed for scale and accountability.
Supported grants administration for New York City’s CDC-funded Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) initiative (2010), whose obesity work included water jets in 229 schools reaching more than 221,000 students, nutrition standards for city agencies, and Move-to-Improve, which trained 2,000 teachers.
Supported New York City’s CDC Community Transformation Grant (CTG), awarded to the Fund for Public Health in New York at $8,391,881 a year in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, building multi-sector partnerships for chronic disease prevention.
Helped transition fiscal functions to the Fund for Public Health in New York, the nonprofit partner that provides fiscal and administrative management for the department.
Modernized grant management and compliance systems as part of a systemwide transformation that grew the grant portfolio she managed from $20M to $65M and retained 1,000 jobs.
05
Workforce and Economic Development
Newark Alliance
Workforce innovation and regional economic development
942Residents moved through training
212Residents placed into jobs
$5.1MWIRED initiative funding
The challenge
The Great Recession: rising unemployment, and a regional economy that needed residents prepared for the jobs still growing.
What this means for your organization
When you need a workforce ready for what is next, training has to be tied to real jobs, real employers, and measurable placement.
Supported the federally funded Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative, connecting education, training, and employers across the region.
“Leonie and I started to work together just after I joined Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Spring 2014. I was impressed by how well Leonie led the Research Operations and Major Grant activities, especially in helping to establish the Mil Familias program. She was very effective in generating revenue through industry-sponsored trials and clinical contracts, and in building relationships with higher education, nonprofits, and pharmaceutical companies. She clearly has a passion for helping others succeed.”
David Kerr, MD, Sansum Diabetes Research Institute
4 case studies inside this story
01
Mil Familias
Partnerships
Helped establish Mil Familias, which aims to enroll 1,000 Latino families living with type 2 diabetes, securing $1.25M in grant funding with support from Eli Lilly.
Led research operations and major grant activities, generating revenue through industry-sponsored trials and clinical contracts, and building relationships with higher education, nonprofits, and pharmaceutical companies.
What makes the work different
Six reasons leaders choose THE THREAD
Led by someone who has held the seat
Dr. Mattison has served as a president and CEO, COO, and chief transformation officer. She knows what the work asks of the people who lead it.
A method, not a template
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ looks beneath the presenting problem, so recommendations fit your institution rather than a generic model.
People and systems together
Structure, talent, data, and technology are designed as one system, because that is how they work.
Built inside complex organizations
Two decades across higher education, government, public health, and nonprofits, each role entered during a period of disruption.
Capability that stays
Every engagement is designed to leave your team stronger and less dependent on outside support.
Personal leadership
Every engagement is led personally by Dr. Mattison, with associate practitioners brought in as the scope requires.
In their words
What colleagues say
“Dr. Lee is a proven transformational leader who engages staff with a particular emphasis on communication, process improvement, organizational culture and breaking down departmental silos. Her thoughtful, intentional approach and ability to engage leaders at all levels and her focus on staff development and creating a learning culture has elevated our organization’s credibility on a statewide level.”
Patricia Keelan, CEO, CommUnify
“Leonie ensures that the workforce is kept in the know at all times...she is creative, a strong communicator and collaborator... I shared with my department how fun and welcoming she made it for the new employees. Good job!”
Mona Miyasato, County Executive Officer, County of Santa Barbara
“Leonie and I started to work together just after I joined Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Spring 2014. I was impressed by how well Leonie led the Research Operations and Major Grant activities, especially in helping to establish the Mil Familias program. She was very effective in generating revenue through industry-sponsored trials and clinical contracts, and in building relationships with higher education, nonprofits, and pharmaceutical companies. She clearly has a passion for helping others succeed.”
David Kerr, MD, Sansum Diabetes Research Institute
“Thank you so much! I knew you’d be able to run with this and make it more wonderful. I appreciate your synthesizing skills and your ability to anticipate our organization’s unspoken needs. You have great eagle eyes!”
María Elena De Guevara, Director of Human Resources
Insights and research from THE THREAD on organizational transformation, leadership, talent, and responsible AI, written by our founder, Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, for boards, executives, and founders leading change.
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™: A practice-based framework for intentional transformation
The method, model, theory, and research agenda behind The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™, examined with scholarly rigor and grounded in more than two decades of executive leadership.
6Practices
4Movements
81Sources cited
Cite this work
Mattison, L. H. (2026). The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™: A practice-based framework for intentional transformation. The Thread Movement Journal, Issue One.
Why an organization can invest deeply in change and still reproduce familiar outcomes, and what it takes to redesign the conditions that keep old patterns in place.
Mattison, L. H. (2026, August 18). The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™: Release the Pattern, Redesign the Conditions. Forbes.
March 2026Forbes Business CouncilT.H.R.E.A.D. series
Before you redesign structures, introduce technology, or launch another initiative, you need to understand what is actually happening. Clarity must precede action.
Mattison, L. H. (2026, January 7). The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™: Why Thinking Deeply Must Be Every Leader’s First Move. Forbes.
November 2025Forbes Business CouncilT.H.R.E.A.D. series
Columns and commentary in Inside Higher Ed, University Business, the Pacific Coast Business Times, and other outlets on leading institutions through pressure, disruption, and renewal.
What can happen when institutional demands collide with deeply held values, and the role allies, relationships, and collective responsibility play in navigating difficult choices.
A two-part series on sustaining people and performance through seasons of sustained pressure.
Research leadership
Translational research
As Director of Clinical Research Operations and Major Grants at Sansum Diabetes Research Institute, Dr. Mattison led research operations and major grant activities supporting translational studies in diabetes care and technology, including:
2013–2018CONCEPTT TrialJDRF / NIDDK · Continuous glucose monitoring in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes
Artificial Pancreas iDCLT TrialNational Institutes of Health · Efficacy and safety of a closed-loop insulin delivery system in a large randomized controlled trial
2015FreeStyle Libre CGMAbbott · IDE study informing regulatory approval of sensor-based glucose monitoring
2016Fiasp InsulinNovo Nordisk · Comparison trial for faster mealtime insulin
2016Apidra (Insulin Glulisine)Sanofi · Non-inferiority trial in gestational diabetes
2014Proteus Ingestible SensorProteus Digital Health · Pilot trial of a digital medication adherence system
Selected grants across public health, workforce development, research, and human services, part of more than $300 million secured and stewarded across Dr. Mattison’s career.
Exhibit 3 · Selected one-time awardsDrawn to scale from zero. The Community Transformation Grant ($8.5M a year) is an annual award and appears in the list.
Communities Putting Prevention to Work$20M
WIRED initiative$5.1M
Mil Familias$1.25M
Artificial Pancreas Human Factors Study$635K
Family Self-Sufficiency Grant$398K
Diabetes in Motion$275K
$20MCommunities Putting Prevention to WorkCenters for Disease Control and Prevention · Policy and environmental change for chronic disease prevention across multiple counties
$8.5M / yearCommunity Transformation GrantCenters for Disease Control and Prevention · Health policy development and multi-sector coalitions
Guides, workbooks, journals, devotionals, and books for young readers, grounded in The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ and a lifetime of intentional transformation.
These publications include leadership and organizational development resources, reflective tools for personal growth, and faith-based devotionals. Select titles were co-created with my daughter to support families raising neurodivergent children through strengths-based learning and encouragement.
Important note: These resources are intended for educational and inspirational purposes. They are not medical, psychological, or clinical services, and they do not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition. For mental health support, diagnosis, or treatment, please consult a licensed professional.
See where your institution aligns, and where it pulls apart.
Pressure reveals patterns that quietly shape the pathways an organization can see, and those pathways determine what becomes possible. The Institutional Coherence Index helps leadership teams see that thread clearly, so they can make better decisions and take action where it matters most.
Coherence is the degree to which an institution’s mission, people, structures, data, and decisions move in the same direction, so that effort adds up instead of pulling apart.
Dimension 1 of 6 · Strengthened through Think DeeplyStrategy and Decision Clarity
Whether leaders share a clear view of priorities, decisions hold once made, and resources follow the strategy.
Dimension 2 of 6 · Strengthened through Harvest WisdomKnowledge and Institutional Memory
Whether critical knowledge lives in shared systems rather than with a few people, and past lessons inform present choices.
Dimension 3 of 6 · Strengthened through Release PatternsProcesses and Legacy Patterns
Whether the institution retires what no longer serves it, or keeps working around it.
Dimension 4 of 6 · Strengthened through Enlist AlliesPeople, Culture, and Trust
Whether staff trust leadership, departments collaborate, and strain is not stalling the most important work.
Dimension 5 of 6 · Strengthened through Adopt ChangeExecution, Technology, and AI Readiness
Whether new systems and tools are truly adopted, and AI has a clear plan and owner.
Dimension 6 of 6 · Strengthened through Design WholenessData Integrity and Stakeholder Confidence
Whether data is trusted, reporting is accurate, and boards, funders, and accreditors have confidence in both.
Select a dimension to see what the Index reads.
Why institutional coherence matters
Transformational organizations turn pressure into possibility by strengthening the people, systems, and conditions that drive performance and impact.
Pressure
Pressure is rarely the problem itself. It is the force that reveals how an institution actually works: demand or enrollment shifts, funding tightens, a review approaches, a leader departs, a new technology arrives.
In the Index report
What the institution is navigating, translated into clear executive language, and how soon it needs to change.
Pattern
Under pressure, institutions respond the way they have learned to respond. Those habits, decisions, and workarounds form a pattern that often stays invisible until pressure brings it to the surface.
In the Index report
How the six dimensions hold together and where they pull apart, with where to focus first and what to protect.
Pathway
Patterns widen or narrow the options leaders can see. Once a pattern is visible, a different pathway can be chosen.
In the Index report
A direction worth exploring, grounded in established practice and led by a practice of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™.
Performance
Performance is what the pattern produces: how well people, systems, and decisions work together to deliver the mission, day after day.
In the Index report
What the current pattern may be producing today, traced from past choices to present conditions.
Possibility
When the parts move in the same direction, effort compounds rather than cancels out, for the institution, its people, and those it serves.
In the Index report
What could become possible, and three things the institution can begin now.
Under possibility: what coherence can make possible
For the institution
Clarity
Execution
Adaptability
For the people
Connection
Capacity
Confidence
For those served
Quality
Responsiveness
Trust
Our working hypothesis: coherence shapes the pathways an institution can see and take, and those pathways shape what becomes possible for performance. The Index is how we are testing it.
“The front of a quilt shows the pattern. The underside shows whether it will hold.”Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, Founder, THE THREAD
What it measures
Six dimensions, each strengthened through a practice of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™
The Index reads the institution; the practices change it. Where a dimension is strained, its practice is where the work begins. Three statements for each dimension, eighteen in all.
01
Strategy and Decision Clarity
Strengthened through Think Deeply
Whether leaders share a clear view of priorities, decisions hold once made, and resources follow the strategy.
02
Knowledge and Institutional Memory
Strengthened through Harvest Wisdom
Whether critical knowledge lives in systems rather than a few people, and past lessons inform present choices.
03
Processes and Legacy Patterns
Strengthened through Release Patterns
Whether the institution retires what no longer serves it, or keeps working around it.
04
People, Culture, and Trust
Strengthened through Enlist Allies
Whether staff trust leadership, departments collaborate, and strain is not stalling the most important work.
05
Execution, Technology, and AI Readiness
Strengthened through Adopt Change
Whether new systems and tools are truly adopted, and AI has a clear plan and owner.
06
Data Integrity and Stakeholder Confidence
Strengthened through Design Wholeness
Whether data is trusted, reporting is accurate, and boards, funders, and accreditors have confidence in both.
Sample executive readout
An executive readout, built for the decision in front of you
In about five minutes, the Index turns one leader’s perspective into a clear picture: where the institution stands, the pattern beneath it, and a 90-day pathway forward. Read it on a laptop, a tablet, or a phone.
THE THREADInstitutional Coherence IndexExample InstitutionSample results
Coherence scoreStabilizingA credible front, with more strain underneath than it was designed for.
Primary pressure pointData and reporting we cannot fully trustNeeds to change within 3 months
Strongest areaStrategy and Decision Clarity3.9 of 5
Six dimension resultsSelect a dimension
Strategy and Decision ClarityThink Deeply3.9
Knowledge and Institutional MemoryHarvest Wisdom3.0
Processes and Legacy PatternsRelease Patterns2.6
People, Culture, and TrustEnlist Allies3.5
Execution, Technology, and AI ReadinessAdopt Change2.4
Data Integrity and Stakeholder ConfidenceDesign Wholeness3.2
Coherence profileWhere it pulls apart
Processes and Execution are straining together
Your 90-day pathwayLed by the practices of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™
Days 1 to 30Sequence technology and AI behind readinessAdopt Change
Days 30 to 60Retire what no longer serves the missionRelease Patterns
Days 60 to 90Turn individual knowledge into institutional systemsHarvest Wisdom
Institutional Coherence Score
3.1Stabilizing
Fragmented, Stabilizing, Aligned, Coherent
Your perception over three retakes: 2.7, 2.9, 3.1
Pattern detectedProcesses and Execution are straining together
New tools are arriving on top of old workarounds.
Greatest constraintExecution, Technology, and AI Readiness
2.4
New tools are arriving faster than the processes and people ready to carry them.
Your snapshot
Example Institution
Stabilizing
Strategy3.9
Knowledge3.0
Processes2.6
People3.5
Execution2.4
Data3.2
Next stepGive one tool an owner, a measure, and a 30-day check-in
Book your debrief
Sample results for an example institution, for illustration.
Priorities, owners, and measures your team can carry.
Where it comes from
Built from inside the work
The Index emerges from more than 20 years of executive leadership across higher education, government, public health, and nonprofit organizations, often during moments of crisis, and from sustained autoethnographic inquiry into how institutions respond under pressure.
That work is documented in The T.H.R.E.A.D. System (2022) and in The Thread Movement Journal.
6-yearWSCUC reaffirmation with five commendations (2025)
Methodology
How the Index is scored
Each statement is rated on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Dimension scores are combined into an overall coherence score and a dimension profile, and the lowest-scoring dimension points to the practice where work should begin.
The free snapshot uses one statement per dimension, taken word for word from the full 18, so the two can be compared. It shows a direction; the full Index, available by invitation, gives a reliable dimension profile.
The Index reflects the perspective of the person completing it. It is a starting point for conversation, not a full institutional audit. That is what the Coherence Diagnostic provides.
Confidentiality
Your responses stay yours
Individual responses are stored securely and never shared. Responses may be used, anonymized and in aggregate, to advance research on institutional coherence. No individual or institution is ever identified, and no group smaller than five is ever reported.
In a Coherence Diagnostic, individual responses are never shared with the employer; the institution receives only combined results.
Human-designed, technology-supported. Secure technology organizes responses, applies The Thread’s interpretation logic, and surfaces patterns and personalized insights. Technology supports the analysis; it does not replace professional judgment. The assessment framework, interpretation logic, and recommendations are grounded in The Thread’s organizational and talent development methodology and established organizational practice.
Over time, aggregated results will inform an annual report on institutional coherence across mission-driven organizations, building the evidence for how coherence connects to pathways, possibility, and performance.
Questions
Before you begin
Who should take the Index?
Presidents, CEOs, executives, cabinet members, directors, board members, trustees, and advisors in colleges and universities, government, public health, nonprofits, and other mission-driven organizations. It is especially useful before a strategic plan, a leadership transition, an accreditation or compliance review, or a major technology or AI investment.
What is the difference between the snapshot and the full Index?
The free snapshot is six statements, one per dimension, shown one at a time, followed by a few short questions about what you are navigating and what you want. It gives you your coherence score, the pattern beneath it, what it may be producing, a pathway worth exploring, and three things you can begin today. The full Index adds twelve statements for your complete dimension profile, a 90-day pathway, and the full executive report. It is available by invitation: after your debrief, Dr. Lee can send you a private link or access code, and your snapshot answers carry over.
Is it really free?
Yes. The snapshot has no cost and no obligation. If you would like to discuss your results, you can book a 30-minute debrief.
Is this an audit or an accreditation evaluation?
No. It reflects one respondent’s perspective and is intended for reflection and planning. For an institution-wide view, apply for a Coherence Diagnostic.
Can I take it more than once?
Yes. Retake the Index over time to compare how your perception of institutional coherence is shifting and identify questions worth examining more deeply. Because the Index reflects one person’s perception, stronger conclusions about institutional change need many perspectives, which is what the Coherence Diagnostic provides. To keep results meaningful, each email can complete the Index once every 24 hours, and each attempt is saved separately.
What happens to my information?
Your responses are stored securely and used to prepare your report and respond to you. With your consent, they may be combined with others, with names, emails, and organizations removed, for research and benchmarks. No individual or institution is ever identified. See our privacy notice.
See the underside before your next review does.
Free, about five minutes, with a personalized executive readout.
About this diagnostic. The Institutional Coherence Index is an organizational and leadership development diagnostic based on one respondent’s perceptions. It is not an audit, compliance review, legal opinion, or human resources assessment, and it does not provide clinical, wellness, legal, or human resources advice.
Thank you for taking a few minutes to reflect on how your organization is holding together.
Before you begin
Answer as things are today, not as you hope they will be or as they appear in the strategic plan.
There are no right or wrong answers. Your first honest response is usually the most useful one.
For adults 18 and older. All of our assessments are open to adults 18 and older.
This is your perspective, and it is confidential. Your individual responses are never shared with your organization.
About five minutes. You can go back and change an answer at any time.
The Leadership Self-Reflection is the better fit.
This Index is designed for leaders responding about an organization they are part of. For a reflection on your own leadership, the Leadership Self-Reflection is the better fit.
In an organization, team, or community, The Thread is the underlying pattern that holds together what appears fragmented: the history, decisions, relationships, routines, and inherited ways of working that shape how it responds to pressure. Pressure brings that pattern to the surface. Once leaders can see it, they can reshape what the system keeps producing.
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™ is six practices that help an organization, team, or community see that pattern, work with it, and redesign what comes next.
Look beneath the first explanation to understand what is really driving decisions, results, and strain.
H
Harvest WisdomH · Backward
Recover what past strategies, initiatives, and the people closest to the work have already taught the organization.
R
Release PatternsR · Downward
Name and retire the routines, workarounds, and legacy decisions that keep producing the same outcomes.
E
Enlist AlliesE · Outward
Bring the right leaders, teams, partners, and stakeholders into shared ownership of the change.
A
Adopt ChangeA · Upward
Turn decisions into practiced roles, routines, and systems until the new way of working holds.
D
Design WholenessD · Forward
Align strategy, structure, data, and culture so the organization works as one coherent whole.
Your institution
What is your thread right now?
Every institution carries a thread: the pattern that surfaces when pressure arrives. The Index helps you see yours across six areas: strategy and decisions, institutional memory, legacy processes, people and trust, execution and AI readiness, and confidence in your data.
6 statements · about 2 minutes · a personalized report
Your report includes
A coherence score and levelWhere the institution stands, from Fragmented to Coherent.
The Thread ProfileSix dimensions ranked, each strengthened through a practice of The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™.
What the institution is navigatingThe pressures you name, translated into clear executive language.
The pattern beneath itWhat the responses suggest, where to focus first, and what to protect.
A pathway worth exploringA direction grounded in established practice, with the practices that lead it.
What could become possibleFor the institution, its people, and those it serves, with three things to begin now.
A report to keep and shareOn screen, as a downloadable PDF, and by email.
Six statements, one at a time, then a few short questions about what the institution is navigating and seeking. The full 18-statement Index is available by invitation after your debrief.
Your Institutional Coherence Index
Download your report to share with your leadership team.
Free, downloadable resources built from The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™. Use them on your own, with your team, or in a coaching conversation. Each one opens with a welcome note from Dr. Leonie H. Mattison.
A leadership podcast hosted by Dr. Leonie H. Mattison, examining institutional change through The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™. Each episode offers grounded leadership insight, a practical consideration for your context, and a reflective question.
The Thread Movement is the nonprofit arm of our work, helping people and organizations transform what change reveals into new possibility, through education, mentoring, and practices grounded in The T.H.R.E.A.D. System™.
Sharing our best tools so more people can transform
Through The Thread Movement, we share our best organizational and talent development tools to help more people, organizations, and communities achieve intentional transformation. Our two signature programs, W.A.I.T.™ and FutureWoven™, are offered at no cost or low cost to women-serving and youth-serving organizations.
For women-serving organizations
W.A.I.T.™ Women Achieve Intentional Transformation
A 12-week leadership development and mentoring program for women navigating leadership transitions, career changes, and life decisions. Participants examine the patterns shaping their choices and decide what comes next, using the six T.H.R.E.A.D. practices.
Self-paced, facilitated cohort, and organization-based cohort formats.
Student success and pathway support for young people ages 10 to 25, combining learning, mentoring, and practical planning to strengthen agency, readiness, and persistence toward completion and meaningful work.
Workshops and full pathway programs with capstone projects.
Partner organizations include nonprofits, schools, and community organizations. Ask us about no-cost and low-cost options for your community.
The Thread, LLC is an organizational and talent development company. The Thread Movement is fiscally sponsored by the Santa Barbara Foundation. The Thread Institute is the learning platform that serves both.
Each tool looks at a different level of the work: you, your leadership, your organization, and your organization’s readiness for responsible AI. All four are free and open to adults 18 and older.
For individuals
The THREAD Check-In™
What this moment is asking of you.
How it works
One question per screen, at your own pace
Your answers are reflected back in your own words
A starting practice is suggested only after you confirm the reflection
What you receive
A reflection built only from what you shared
A possible starting practice and a question to carry
One small practice to try this week
No email required · Your answers stay in your browser
If you want to go further, Dr. Leonie H. Mattison can walk through your results with you, or design a deeper diagnostic for your leadership team or organization.
This notice explains what information THE THREAD collects through this website and how it is used.
What we collect
When you submit a form or complete the Leadership Self-Reflection or the Institutional Coherence Index, we collect only what you provide: your name, email, title, organization, country, and your answers. Nothing more.
The THREAD Check-In™
Your Check-In responses are processed in your browser to create your reflection. They are not sent to us or stored on our servers, and no AI is used to create your reflection. If you choose “Keep on this device,” a short summary is stored in your browser’s local storage on that device only, so a future Check-In can ask what has changed; you can remove it at any time with “Forget my saved Check-Ins” or by clearing your browser data. If you choose to email, share, or print your reflection, it goes only where you send it. If you contact us or subscribe, only the information you enter in that form is sent.
Why we collect it
To create and send your report, to respond to your inquiry or follow up if you ask us to, and, in anonymized form, to advance research on institutional coherence. If you opt in, we also share occasional insights. We never sell or share your information.
Where it is stored
Securely in Google Workspace tools, accessible only to Dr. Leonie H. Mattison and associates who have signed a confidentiality agreement. A notification of each submission is sent to our team, and assessment reports are emailed to the address you provide.
How research use works
With your consent, responses may be combined with others, with names, emails, and organizations removed, to study patterns across institutions. Research is done on a separate, de-identified copy of the data. No individual or institution is ever identified in anything we publish, and we never report results for groups smaller than five.
If your institution engages us
In a Coherence Diagnostic, individual responses are never shared with your employer. The institution receives only combined results, and no group smaller than five is reported separately.
How long we keep it
Identifiable information is deleted or anonymized after three years.
Retakes
Retake the Index over time to compare how your perception of institutional coherence is shifting and identify questions worth examining more deeply. You can take it once every 24 hours. Each attempt is saved separately. If you complete the full Index after your snapshot, it is added to the same record. The full Index is available by invitation, through a private link or access code.
How we protect submissions
Our forms use Google reCAPTCHA and automated checks to block spam and misuse, and we limit how many report emails any address can receive each day. Use of reCAPTCHA is subject to Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Your choices
You can request a copy of your information, unsubscribe, or ask us to delete it at any time by emailing leoniemattison@thethreadllc.com.
Perspective from Dr. Leonie H. Mattison for boards, chief executives, and founders, delivered to your inbox.
Leadership and governance through growth and transition
Talent, culture, and organizational performance
Responsible AI adoption that people trust
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Before you begin
Please enter your month and year of birth
We ask everyone this before any of our reflections or assessments. It is used only to confirm eligibility and is not saved or sent anywhere.
Thank you for your interest
This is not available to you
The reflections and assessments on this site are designed for adults 18 and older. We are glad you are curious about leadership, and we hope you will return when the time is right.
Research journal · PDF · 36 pages
Practice guide · PDF · 20 pages
Worksheets · PDF · 8 pages
Reflection pages · PDF · 10 pages
Conversation cards · PDF · 8 pages
Coloring pages · PDF · 9 pages
